Pre-mapping network drives

Normally when you map a network drive the share you need to connect to must be available. However, it's possible to map a drive when the share isn't available by following these steps:

  1. Map a network drive to any share available on the network. Select the option to make the connection persistent and also the option to provide other credentials (specify any user account you like for this purpose—you can even create a temporary user account if necessary).
  2. Using Registry Editor, navigate to HKCU\Network\driveletter where driveletter is the drive letter you used to map the drive.
  3. Change the value of the registry values RemotePath and UserName to match the UNC path and credentials that should be used to connect to the unavailable network share you wanted to map a drive to.
  4. Run the command rundll32.exe keymgr.dll, KRShowKeyMgr and click Add and specify the credentials for the UserName used in the previous step. If desired you can also remove the credentials cached by the first step above.

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